Tourists venture back to Champs Elysees after attack: 'Vive Paris!'

French police officers patrol on the Champs Elysees boulevard, with the Arc de Triomphe in background, in Paris, Friday, April 21, 2017. Tourists were back on the Champs Elysees early Friday with a mixture of shock and defiance, a day after a jihadist shot dead a policeman on the world-famous avenue on the eve of France’s election. AP Photo

French Police officers patrol the Champs Elysees avenue near the Arc de Triomphe monument in Paris on April 21, 2017 a day after a gunman opened fire on police nearby on the avenue, killing a policeman and wounding two others in an attack claimed by the Islamic State. Tourists were back on the Champs Elysees early Friday with a mixture of shock and defiance, a day after a jihadist shot dead a policeman on the world-famous avenue on the eve of France’s election. AFP Photo

PARIS: Tourists were back on the Champs Elysees early Friday with a mixture of shock and defiance, a day after a jihadist shot dead a policeman on the world-famous avenue on the eve of France’s election.

“I needed to get out, to come back here and see the sunshine and that everything was OK,” said Lebanese tourist Zeina Bitar, 45, who was shopping on the boulevard with her children when the gunman struck.

Nearby, a police officer laid a white rose at the site where the shooter felled his comrade with an automatic weapon, unleashing a firefight in which the assailant was killed and two other officers were wounded.

“We heard the shots and people were running in every direction,” said Bitar, adding that her children were in tears. “But people were calm, we were well treated and they gave us hot chocolate.”

Under a cloudless spring sky, the dozens of emergency and security vehicles of the night before had been replaced by media trucks on the glitzy tree-lined avenue – a symbol of Paris.